CIMG Sustainability Summit advocates collective action against galamsey
The maiden Chartered Institute of Marketing- Ghana (CIMG) Sustainability Marketing Summit has been held in Accra with a call on businesses in the financial sector to support the fight against illegal mining, known commonly as galamsey.
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The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Chartered Institute of Bankers - Ghana (CIB), Robert Dzato, who made the call, stressed that the health, environmental and economic impact of galamsey was dire and required financial institutions to play a crucial role in addressing it.
"When companies and businesses want to prioritise sustainability in their operations, they must rise against galamsey. The health consequences of this canker are dire, and our very economic activities are under threat, so we cannot sit and do nothing," he stressed.
Mr Dzato said failure to tackle the galamsey menace would spell doom for the country's progress in achieving many of the sustainable development goals (SDG).
He added that banks and bankers were catalysts for change and had a crucial role to play in promoting environmental and social governance (ESG) by prioritising green loans to consolidate sustainability initiatives.
The CIB CEO observed that with the world requiring $7 trillion and Africa needing $780 billion to achieve the SDGs by 2030, financial institutions had the chance to leverage opportunities for investment in the green space.
Other speakers at the summit, including the National President of CIMG, Daniel Kasser Tee; the Executive Director of CIMG, Kwabena Agyekum, and the Chief Risk Officer at EcoBank Plc, Joanna Mensah, stressed the need for businesses to adhere strictly to sound sustainability practices that would help to safeguard the environment.
Collective action
Mr Kasser Tee said galamsey was the biggest threat to the planet and humanity and would require all hands on deck to address it.
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“Galamsey is an existential threat because it is affecting our waterbodies, destroying our lands, wiping out our forests and killing living organisms in the soil. We must join hands to stop this menace before it kills us all,” he stressed.
He said the concept of sustainability also meant safeguarding the environment, for which reason companies must promote strategies that would help to reduce ecological footprints.
Mr Kasser Tee also said the sustainability summit was an opportunity to explore how actionable strategies could be used to create a balance between people, the planet and profit.
Sustainability agenda
For her part, Ms Mensah said the concept of sustainability required businesses to prioritise systems that promoted sound environmental protection and waste management.
She said aside from helping to reduce carbon footprints, adopting green business practices would ensure job creation.
For that reason, she underscored the need for companies to view waste as a resource for creating wealth.
She said with Ghana generating an estimated 1.7 million tonnes of waste each year, urban centres facing the brunt of improper waste management businesses could leverage that opportunity by adopting green technologies for waste management.